Common prosthetic suspension liners and sleeves are configured and dimensioned to accommodate a wide range of anatomies and movement, but may fall short at conforming to the limb of certain users with less conventional shapes and during certain joint movement. With knee joint movement, material may bunch or gather behind or posterior the knee resulting in folds in the fabric or materials of the liner or sleeve. The folds may cause discomfort as the user flexes the knee and irritate skin. The anterior side should be stretchable to permit joint movement to account for the change in the knee shape. From these observations, the anterior and posterior sides require different areas of elastic stiffness (different elasticity) to provide a comfortable liner or sleeve.
Efforts have been taken in the past to account for the different stiffness or elasticity desired from a single sleeve, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,539, granted on Jul. 15, 2003. The sleeve includes providing elasticized fabric sections having different elastic stiffness. While this sleeve successfully accommodates the anatomy and movement of various anatomies, it is labor-intensive and expensive to provide the different elastic stiffness due to the need to stitch the elasticized sections to one another.
A suspension liner described in U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2011/0098827, published on Apr. 28, 2011, includes securing various fabric layers over one another at designated areas. This liner requires stitching fabric layers over one another, and providing seams along the liner which complicates the process for fabricating the liner. The additional layers also increase the overall thickness of the liner, adding weight and reducing the ability for the user to freely flex the joint covered by the liner or sleeve.